


Solitaire

by kuolettava (salainen)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Autistic Character, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-14 02:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1248475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salainen/pseuds/kuolettava
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six snapshots of Stannis' life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solitaire

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like it's probably important to disclaim that I _am_ autistic myself. Also please be warned that there is both external and internalized ableism in this story, so don't read it if that triggers you!

**I. Three**

"Do you think there is something the matter with Stannis?" Cassana Estermont asks her husband, late one night as they retire to bed.

Steffon is taken aback. "Why do you ask?" He's away from his wife and two young sons more often than he would like to admit, and he misses much. But such is the duty of a lord, a lesson he will soon have to instill in his boys.

"He's just so different from Robert. He doesn't play with their toys, doesn't talk, doesn't smile, doesn't even look at me most of the time."

"I'm sure it's just that he's a different boy than Robert. Robert's been loud and mischievous since the day he was born; mayhaps this time the gods have decided to take pity on us." He smiles at his wife, hoping to comfort her.

"Mayhaps," she says, but she doesn't feel convinced. She would ask the maester, but he sees Stannis nearly daily and has never said anything. She would ask some of her ladies, ones with more children, or even her maids, but she fears the word getting out. It wouldn't do for one of the sons of House Baratheon to be called simple -- before they knew it, the smallfolk would be talking about their cursed lords and other superstitious nonsense. 

No, she will keep it between her and Steffon for now. Maybe he'll grow out of it.

* * *

**II. Seven**

"Stannis, do you know why I have taken you out of lessons?" Maester Cressen asks him.

"No," he says, and he says it with such wide-eyed conviction that Cressen is sure he means it. He doesn't think Stannis has told a lie in his life, unlike his unruly brother.

"I had to take you out because you were being cruel to your brother."

"I was not being cruel," he argues. "Robert is almost always wrong when we do sums, he does not read as well as I do, and his writing is messy. He _is_ stupid."

"No, Stannis, he is not. You are just learning faster than he is, that's all."

"Then what does stupid mean, if not slow to learn? Robert is older than I am. He should do better than I."

Cressen pauses. "Stupid is mayhaps best described as an _unwillingness_ to learn. No one is stupid so long as they keep their minds open."

Stannis takes this in. "Then Robert is still stupid," he decides. "He told me last night that he hates lessons and doesn't like to read. All he wants to do is train in the yard, even though Father told us that a good lord is trained both with books and with swords."

He's such a solemn little boy, absorbing all of Lord Steffon's instructions in lordship and recalling them all with perfect clarity when his father asks. Lord Steffon is always so proud then, clapping and laughing and ruffling Stannis' hair, a gesture he always backs away from. He can do it with almost any list Cressen gives him, be it words to learn or dates of important battles. It's impressive, if somewhat unnerving.

"Your father does have the right of it," Cressen allows. "A lord must be educated as well as trained as a knight. But Robert is young, and young boys often wish to be out in the yard rather than inside with the maester."

"I am young and do not feel the need to shirk my duties." 

"No, that is true." If anything, he thinks Stannis should shirk his duties _more_. He does everything that's asked of him with complete obedience, up until it crosses paths with a different request or lesson he's taken as true, and then he stands still as a statue until he resolves the conflict. But for all of his strength with words and numbers, Stannis so far has not shown much promise in the yard. He trips over his feet and his swings with his blunted sword are so clumsy he'd likely have lost an arm or a leg by now if it had an edge on it. Cressen has no doubt that he'll make an excellent strategist when he begins training the young Baratheons in it, but as an actual knight he would leave much to be desired.

"Maester, am I strange?" he asks, after the two of them have been standing in contemplative silence for a moment. He can hear Robert kicking his feet into the table inside the room they use for lessons.

"What?"

"Everyone in the castle thinks me strange. I heard two of Lord Swann's knights talking about it when they were here last week."

"I'm sure that was just because you said their lord's doublet was too small for his belly and they were feeling offended."

"It was too small!"

"Yes, I suppose," says Cressen, "but it was unkind to say so. Just as it is unkind to call your brother stupid."

"But those things are true. How can it be unkind if it is true?"

"Just because a thing is true does not mean one has to say it."

"So Lord Swann would rather look a fool than have someone tell him that he is too fat for his doublet?"

Cressen hestitates. "Mayhaps. It is possible that he would rather be told, but even if it were so, he probably did not appreciate you telling him so when your lady mother was presenting you and your brother to him in the great hall."

Stannis cocks his head to the side, a surefire sign that he is puzzling something out. "I think I understand, Maester."

"Good. Shall we return to lessons now?"

* * *

**III. Thirteen**

He is devastated by his parents' deaths. 

He knows he will always remember seeing _Windproud_ go down in Shipbreaker Bay, and he knows he will never again believe in any gods who would let such a thing happen. In the span of one day he loses his father, his mother, and his faith, three of the most comforting things in his uncomfortable life. He knows that he has the best life can offer as the son of a great lord, but he is always so _uncomfortable_. His clothes don't feel right. He can't stop fidgeting no matter how much he berates himself. Everyone in the castle, even the baby, avoids him. Aside from Cressen, the only people who paid him any attention were his parents, and now they're both lying at the bottom of the bay.

He knows he should show something, the restrained tears of his brother, mayhaps, but nothing happens. He spends the next several days, including the funeral, with the same far-eyed stare he normally wears.

"You don't even care," Robert hisses at him the day after they bury their parents. "Mother and Father _died_ and you don't even care!"

"Yes, I do," Stannis says, voice outstandingly flat in comparison to the wild fluctuations of Robert's.

"I don't think you do! You just have the same damn face you always do, where you just stare off at nothing! You probably don't even have feelings!"

Stannis' fists curl and uncurl at his sides. He wants to prove to Robert that he feels something, anything, but the only thing he can seem to express is done through the small movements of his hands.

"I-- I-- I--"

"And you can't even talk. You always get like this when we fight, like a _girl_. At least at the Eyrie I won't have to try and put up with you anymore. That's Cressen's job."

He leaves in the morning, and it's months before Stannis sees him again. He doesn't even write.

* * *

**IV. Seventeen**

Robert and Jon Arryn and Ned Stark have started a war. Stories conflict about _why_ , and since Stannis hasn't been able to leave the castle in months he can't get an accurate report from someone he trusts. Not that he trusts anyone more than Maester Cressen, who's just as trapped within Storm's End as he is.

_I'm returning to Storm's End,_ Robert's letter had said. _I'm raising the banners and we're going to war. Isn't this exciting? Of course, you probably don't think so, since you don't get excited. You are to hold the castle in my absence._

He had sat down in the small solar -- the large one was Robert's, even if he was rarely home -- and stared at the letter for hours, trying to decide who he really owed his allegiance to. Wasn't he supposed to serve the king, even if he was as mad as everyone said? But he also had to serve his older brother and liege lord, didn't he?

He hadn't realized he was pacing the floor, hands shaking in front of him, until Cressen came in.

"What did the letter say?"

Stannis immediately whips his head around, dropping his hands to his sides. He could not believe he had given in to that childish impulse. "Robert is returning home to raise the banners. I am to hold the castle in his absence."

"You?" Cressen says, shocked.

"Yes, _me_ , Maester! Despite what everyone seems to think, I am not a half-wit child, and I am perfectly capable of holding the castle. I have been running Storm's End since Robert's departure, if you will recall, and I will continue to do so."

"But that was not _war_ , Stannis," Cressen says with emotion. Stannis isn't sure which one. Fear, perhaps. "You have done an admirable job with the castle in Robert's absence, but we were not being besieged!"

"So we will prepare for a siege, and we will hold this castle, as I have been instructed!" He stops short, realizing that he has made his decision. Storm's End will support Robert in his rebellion.

He prepares for the siege as well as he can, but Lord Mace Tyrell holds out even longer, and supplies begin to dwindle. Soon they're down to rats and boot leather, everyone in the keep looking gaunt and haggard. Renly cries near-constantly, even though he gets proportionally more food than anyone else.

His master-at-arms and a couple of knights attempt to sneak out a gate to surrender. Stannis throws them all in the dungeon. "I was told to hold this castle, regardless of circumstance," is all he says when asked.

In the second stroke of good fortune Stannis has ever experienced, a smuggler washes ashore with a cargo hold full of food.

"Ser," says the knight who tells him, "there's a man under the castle who says he has supplies."

"You and three more knights will accompany me to see him," he says, throwing a cloak over his bony shoulders.

"Ser," says the knight, his eyes darting around in what Stannis has learned means "apprehension", "I think the man is a smuggler."

"I would assume so," Stannis says, leading them down to the docks under Storm's End.

The man is not what he expected. He's brown-haired and bearded and at least ten years older than Stannis, but barely reaches his shoulders and is only half as broad. Stannis thought a smuggler would be more intimidating.

"Davos, at your service, m'lord," he says, bowing. "I've brought you as much food as I could fit on my ship, m'lord. Thought you might need it."

"And why did you bring this, _smuggler_? For the reward? Or out of the kindness of your heart?"

"Can't it be both, m'lord?"

Stannis is struck by his words. "Mayhaps it can. You have saved all our lives, thus a reward is in order. However, you are a notorious lawbreaker, and that cannot stand." Davos is looking at him with an expression he can't name. "Assuming your ship truly is full of food and not Tyrell soldiers, I will have you knighted for your services tonight. For your crimes...your fingertips should suffice. That is a common punishment for thieves, is it not?"

"Aye, m'lord, it is."

"It will be 'my lord' soon, smuggler."

Davos makes him swing the cleaver that maims him and wield the sword that knights him. He bears both well, and Stannis finds himself grudgingly admiring the newly-made Onion Knight.

It's mutual.

* * *

**V. Twenty-three**

"I do not wish to marry," he says through gritted teeth. "Especially not to a woman from the Reach."

"You don't have a choice in the matter," Robert shoots back, loudly. Always loudly. "If you're going to be Lord of Dragonstone, you need a wife and heirs."

"Dragonstone should go to Renly --"

"'-- _and I should have Storm's End_ ,'" Robert mocks. "You did me a great service holding it during the siege, I'll grant you that, but it's going to Renly."

"But it's not fair," says Stannis, and he knows he sounds like an petulant child even as he says it.

"Life isn't always fair, Stanny," Robert replies, clapping him on the back. Stannis glares at him. "And you're marrying Selyse Florent."

The wedding is a disaster. Stannis has never known anyone less prone to conversation than him -- until he meets his wife. They don't speak, they don't look at each other more than necessary, and they only take one awkward spin around the dance floor before sitting back down again, and only because Cressen told Stannis the night before that it was expected of him.

It turns out one dance was all the opportunity Robert needed to defile one of Selyse's cousins in their marriage bed, further dampening the mood, though Stannis is secretly relieved that no one will expect him to do that part of his duty tonight, not after this. No one has told him what to do, and while he's never been in that situation, he's quite sure that he doesn't have any instincts in that direction. He doesn't have any instincts when it comes to other people.

Except maybe Davos, who never seems put off by his lord's grave demeanour or his blunt words. He's not sure how he and Davos became friends, exactly, but the knight sticks close to him and gives him good counsel, and that's all he needs. He wishes Davos was sitting with him now, but as a new knight he's relegated to a seat far down the hall with his wife and oldest son.

There's no bedding, but he and Selyse retire to the same bedchamber. "I am sorry," Stannis says, looking at the ground. "I know this is not the wedding you wanted."

"Of course it isn't," she huffs. "If it was the wedding I wanted, it wouldn't have been to you. Even in the Reach there are stories about you, _my lord_."

He doesn't ask for clarification, but he knows what sort of stories she means. He blows out the candles lighting the room and tries to sleep.

* * *

**VI. Thirty-six**

Lord Snow's idea was ridiculous. These lords owed him their fealty and their soldiers, as their rightful king, but instead he has him out in the mountains feasting and drinking his way from castle to holdfast and what seems like every building larger than a crofter's hut in between. It's horrible.

"Snow, I have more pressing matters to attend to than courting your mountain folk like a bunch of skittish maidens. Can't I just send an envoy on my behalf?" he had asked as soon as Snow told him about it. It seemed like the sort of duty Massey would be interested in.

"No," the boy said, his eyes wide and hands spread. "They'd take it as an insult that you didn't come yourself. You have to go, and it would be best if you at least pretended to enjoy yourself."

He never would have agreed to it if he wasn't so desperate for men, but since that was the situation he was in, he was currently traipsing eastward through the mountains. The whole thing had been a mess, in Stannis' opinion. Despite taking Snow's advice to fake enjoyment, he knew he had been as stiff and dour as ever, and the sheer volume of every one of these celebrations gave him a pounding headache and the urge to crawl under the table. At the Wulls' feast, the last one he had been to, several young ladies had insisted on dancing with him, and by the looks of the men it seemed best to acquiesce. His dancing was poor, his drinking was worse, and he had berated at least three people last night alone.

And yet, despite his numerous failings every single night, he had a steadily-growing tail of Northmen at his back and more heading to Castle Black.

Jon Snow is waiting for him in the courtyard when he returns to the castle, surrounded by his new Northern troops.

"Successful trip, I take it?" he asks.

"Yes," Stannis grunts, not wanting to divulge the insecurities surrounding it.

"Oh, aye," says one of the Wull men. "You should have seen him dancing with all the girls!"

"And he had some real stories about those damned Greyjoys," adds a Norrey.

"He outdrank Old Rick," says a Liddle. "Of course we'd follow him."

Snow grins as more of them add stories. Stannis is bewildered by the entire happening.

"I wasn't expecting to hear such tales about you, Your Grace," Snow says later, when they're alone.

"I imagine so," he says tersely. "I am aware of how others view me."

Snow's eyebrows shoot up again. "Your Grace?"

"I know I am not well-loved by others, Lord Snow. I strike them as cold, and unfeeling, and joyless. They avoid my company and I theirs. I have no gift for dealing with others, not like my brothers did, and I am sure that my attempting to celebrate with your mountain men to win their allegiance will provide humourous stories to the men of the Night's Watch for years to come."

"Stories, yes, but not ones to laugh at. You're right in that people find you distant and harsh, but this is the North. Everyone here is a bit like that, even those men you just wined and dined into joining you. You have to be, or you'll die in your first winter. They didn't expect much, since you're a southron, but you showed them you've got the heart of a real Northman. You kept going through the snow and the wind without giving in, and you brought the promise of justice for my father and brother -- the Norrey told me that most of them look at you the same way they looked at 'the Ned'. They're not telling those tales to mock you; they're proud of you and more than glad to have you as king. Even the fact that you came to see them is telling. Most of those clans haven't had a royal visit in centuries.

You're not like most men, Your Grace, but I don't think anyone minds."

It's the most he's ever heard Snow say. The boy is a bit like him that way, quiet and determined and perhaps a bit too serious for his age. Mayhaps he's got it in him to be Lord Commander after all.

"Thank you, Lord Snow."

"You're welcome, Your Grace."


End file.
